Australian Aboriginal cricket team in England in 1868

The Australian Aboriginal cricket team in England in 1868 was a side composed of Australian Aborigines which toured England between May and October of that year, thus becoming the first organised group of Australian cricketers to travel overseas.[1] (The first tour by an Australian team classed as representative would not be made until 1878.)

International sporting contact was rare in this era. Previously, only three cricket teams had travelled abroad, all English: to the United States and Canada in 1859, and to Australia in 1861–62 and 1863–64.

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From the early 1860s onwards, cricket matches between Aborigines and European settlers had been played on the cattle stations of the Wimmera district in western Victoria, where many Aborigines worked as stockmen. The athletic skills of the Aborigines were so evident that a series of matches was eventually undertaken with the intention of forming the strongest-possible Aboriginal eleven.

The Aborigines returned to Victoria and a second attempt to organise a tour of England was initiated by new financial backers. The former Surrey professional cricketer Charles Lawrence, who coached the Albert Club in Sydney, became coach and manager of a team which included some from the original 1867 tour of Eastern Australia, plus a handful of new faces.

The Sporting Life, London 16 May 1868: The arrival of the Australian Aboriginal cricket team in England.

The team arrived in London in May 1868[4] and were met with a degree of fascination - that being the period of the evolutionary controversies following publication of Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species in 1859. Reaction was mixed. The Times described the tourists as, "a travestie upon cricketing at Lord's", and, "the conquered natives of a convict colony." The Daily Telegraph said of Australia that, "nothing of interest comes from there except gold nuggets and black cricketers."

The first match was played at The Oval in London and attracted 20,000 spectators. Presumably many of these spectators attended out of curiosity to see members of a strange-looking race perform athletically rather than merely to savour a cricket contest. The Times reported:

"Their hair and beards are long and wiry, their skins vary in shades of blackness, and most of them have broadly expanded nostrils. Having been brought up in the bush to agricultural pursuits under European settlers, they are perfectly civilised and are quite familiar with the English language."

The Daily Telegraph wrote:

It is highly interesting and curious, to see mixed in a friendly game on the most historically Saxon part of our island, representatives of two races so far removed from each other as the modern Englishman and the Aboriginal Australian. Although several of them are native bushmen, and all are as black as night, these Indian fellows are to all intents and purposes, clothed and in their right minds.

The team's star all-rounder Johnny Mullagh.

Altogether, the Aborigines played 47 matches throughout England over a period of six months, winning 14, losing 14 and drawing 19; a good result that surprised many at the time. Their skills were said to range from individuals who were exceptional athletes down to two or three other team members who hardly contributed at all. The outstanding player was Johnny Mullagh. He scored 1,698 runs and took 245 wickets. An admired English fast bowler of the time, George Tarrant, bowled to Mullagh during a lunch interval and later said, "I have never bowled to a better batsman."

In addition to playing cricket, the Aborigines frequently put on an exhibition of boomerang and spear throwing at the conclusion of a match. Dick-a-Dick would also hold a narrow parrying shield and invite people throw cricket balls at him, which he warded off with the shield. The Aborigines were narrowly beaten in a cricket-ball-throwing competition by an emerging English all-rounder of star quality, 20-year-old W. G. Grace, who threw 118 yards.[5]

The team arrived back in Sydney in February 1869. They played a match against a military team the following month, then split up. Twopenny later moved to New South Wales and played for the colony against Victoria in 1870. Cuzens died of dysentery the following year. Mullagh was employed as a professional with the Melbourne Cricket Club and represented Victoria against the touring English team in 1879, when he top scored in the second innings.

The Central Board for Aborigines ruled in 1869 that it would be illegal to remove any Aborigine from the colony of Victoria without the approval of the government minister. This effectively curtailed the involvement of Aborigines in the game.

A 2002 documentary film — A fine body of Gentlemen made by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and Film Illawarra and directed by Geoff Burton described the background to each of the players and the matches in detail.[8]